Thand Rakh

Imagine this scene in front of your eyes. Your strict Mathematics teacher is teaching a difficult chapter and your careless partner is cracking jokes in your ears and you feel like laughing uncontrollably. Would you laugh out loud or control your laughter in front of the teacher?

OR

Your dear friend is irritating  you to heights and you feel like slapping her hard. Would you actually slap her or refrain from doing it?

Right, you would refrain yourself from reacting in situations mentioned above. Like laughter and disgust are emotions and so is anger. Now, an important question arises that if we can control these emotions then why not anger? These are some of the actions I do when I am red and boiling with anger

• Ignoring,
• Drinking water,
• Screaming,
• Being rude,
• Distancing,
• Crying,
• Not eating
• Hitting
• Being silent

Are your actions and reactions also the same?

Like happiness, anger is also a healthy and a strong emotion. Just like a kitchen knife. A strong firm knife is surely useful but at the same time can be harmful too if used with negligence. It is useful for cutting, chopping etc. but can hurt someone if used carelessly.  Just like this anger also needs to be dealt with utmost  care. It can overpower other emotions and helps us in changing our life and setting our life on the right path. We should  try to keep calm when in unrest  and use  this strong weapon judiciously. It can lead to harsh fights, failures, health problems, severe headache, or migraine, failing  friendship or relationship to name a few. The ill effects are many .We should not let this emotion overpower us as it can make us a  dull and an irritated person. Instead, we should try to be jovial at all times. 

          Once I was sharing my anger problem with my grandmother . She narrated a short story which helped  me  tremendously .

   There were two boys who had a very big fight. They  blamed each other for the showdown. Suddenly there was a loud blast in the bathroom and the apartment was on fire.

At this point my grandmother asked me that what I would have done in this situation. She gave me three options to choose from.

1. Drowse the  fire by throwing oil. It is like aggravating the fight and argument when both are furious at each other.

2. Run to the garden and try to arrange for a hose pipe to drowse fire with water. 

3. Keep calm and use a fire extinguisher we have at home. It is like not discussing  when both are angry and  settle the fight later when both are calm.

  I immediately responded that I would try to  stay calm rather than panicking and extinguish the fire using the fire extinguisher my father had kept at home for emergency. So, my grandmother told me that like in the above situation where I tried to stay calm, we should always try to maintain our calmness if the other person is in anger. She told that when someone is angry, our reacting back violently is like  putting  oil in the fire. This aggravates the fight. Anger increases our heart beating rate too. Our blood pressure increases which may lead to heart problems and other body ailments. In such situations we should act a little more sensibly. She made me recall about Mahatma Gandhiji’ s great words -

"Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding"

She continued to explain me ways to control the anger. She made me learn three magic mantras towards controlling my anger. She told me that when I am in anger, I should speak to myself and say: "I acknowledge and recognize that I am angry but just for now". Likewise, if someone else is angry, it is also momentary. We should distance ourselves from the other person and talk about it the next day when all are calm. We are just angry for a moment but the bitterness remains with us all the time if we say or hear nasty things. She also recommended that we should take a deep breath, close our eyes and think where in the body we feel stiffness due to anger? Do you have 

• Frown or raised eyebrows
• Headache
• Back pain
• Raised shoulders
• Clenching fists

Try to release the stiffness from that body part and relax those muscles. It releases our stress automatically and helps in regulating our heartbeat .

Last but not the least and my favorite mantra - she told me to recite a self made song aloud when in anger and to make new poem every time I was angry.

Thand Rakh 1 - Get me a bun
Thand Rakh 2 - Give me a shoe
Thand Rakh 3 - There goes the bee
Thand Rakh 4 - I want a score
Thand Rakh 5 - We all are alive
Thand Rakh 6 - Get me a fix
Thand Rakh 7 - Go to the heaven
Thand Rakh 8 - Don’t be late
Thand Rakh 9 - You’ll be fine
Thand Rakh 10 - Go to the den

This song would distract, cool us down and help in forgetting about the fight.
Anger is like playing fire with fire.

Anger is a tool. It doesn’t control you, you control it. 

From today, let us start controlling it using the 3 step technique!